Adelson-Berkley feud comes to head

LAS VEGAS — Sheldon Adelson emerged this year as the Republican billionaire who kept Newt Gingrich’s flailing presidential campaign afloat and then vowed to spend “whatever it takes” to oust President Barack Obama.

In the city where his fortunes were first minted, however, Adelson’s involvement in elective politics has been defined by a different brutal and enduring drama: His 15-year quest to take down Shelley Berkley.

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That battle climaxes on Election Day when either Berkley foils Adelson once again by defeating Nevada Sen. Dean Heller — or her political career ends amid a hail of attack ads funded by the Las Vegas Sands CEO.

Their path from confidants to mortal foes began in the mid-1990s when, as Adelson’s corporate lawyer, she vocally opposed his efforts to open the Venetian hotel-casino as a non-union shop. She also says he tried to force her to run for Congress as a Republican. He wrote in the local newspaper that she betrayed his attorney-client privileges and said he’d have to engage in corruption to get his project approved.

“I hate even talking about him because after all these years, it still upsets me terribly,” Berkley said. “We were very good friends, obviously, when I went to work for him.”

Berkley, a seven-term congresswoman from Las Vegas, wouldn’t need to run again until 2018 and she says reaching the Senate would be her crowning political achievement. So this round is likely Adelson’s last, best shot at thwarting her ambitions.

“It’s for all the marbles,” Berkley said, speaking broadly of her bid for the Senate.

She trailed Heller by eight points in last week’s Las Vegas Review-Journal poll, and her candidacy has been stung by a bipartisan House ethics investigation into charges she failed to disclose her nephrologist husband’s connection to a local dialysis clinic she fought in Congress to save.

Berkley said didn’t need to disclose because her husband’s occupation was well-known. She has tried to reframe the issue by casting herself as a selfless advocate for a crucial health care service in the state.

Nonetheless, the House Ethics Committee voted unanimously to proceed with an investigation — even though one way or the other she won’t be a House member and will be beyond its jurisdiction after December.

The issue has weighed her down, and Berkley’s main hope for victory is she will be lifted by a significant statewide Democratic registration advantage and a legendary get-out-the-vote machine built by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

But Adelson, too, intends to be pivotal. The Karl Rove-run SuperPAC he supports, Crossroads GPS, has spent more than $4 million to beat her including $1.2 million this month, sums that go a long way in a state of just 1.2 million active registered voters. The Crossroads spending is about 60 percent of the $6.7 million spent by outside groups against Berkley, according to FEC records.

In addition, Las Vegas Sands executives and its corporate PAC combine to be, by a large margin, the largest group of direct donors to Heller’s campaign.